As lawmakers scrambled to finish up a package of budget bills Thursday, an 11th-hour dispute erupted among senior Republican lawmakers and fellow Republican Gov. Tom Corbett over a bill to further limit the ability of school boards to raise property taxes.

Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati said the sides were trying to iron out a disagreement over a key bill that the House was poised to send to the Senate today. But one of the changes in an amendment added to the bill by the House late Wednesday night caused ripples with Senate Republicans.

The amended bill would eliminate most existing exemptions from a so-called “back-end” referendum requirement for certain school property tax increases that exceed a rate similar to inflation. But it also would place too many restrictions on districts that have construction debt or need to erect new school buildings, Scarnati said.

“We’re trying to work it out, and hopefully we get it all worked out today,” said Scarnati, R-Jefferson, after leaving a meeting with House Speaker Sam Smith, R-Jefferson. “It’s important to the governor. The governor has demanded that back-end referendum be part of this budget, and we’re certainly going to work towards trying to get it done.”

Asked whether Corbett will sign the budget bill without the school tax bill on his desk, Scarnati declined comment. The governor’s office did not immediately return a call seeking comment this afternoon.

The disagreement over the school tax bill — which is opposed by the state’s largest teachers union and the Pennsylvania School Boards Association — emerged a day after the House sent Corbett a nearly $27.2 billion budget bill for the fiscal year 2011-12 that begins Friday.

At this late stage in the legislative session, legislative leaders and the governor have hammered out complicated agreements regarding which measures to approve, so a fight over a critical element of the freshman governor’s agenda could have implications beyond the bill itself.

It has been nine years since a state budget has been approved on time. The spending plan passed both chambers of the Legislature this week without a single Democratic lawmaker voting in favor.

The amendment added to a broader school tax bill late Wednesday would still permit exceptions for pension and special education costs, but would change the wording of those exceptions. Pension and special education costs have accounted for the majority of the exceptions that school boards have sought in avoiding referendums since the law was passed in 2006.

In a state with 500 school districts, just 14 referendums have been held, and all but one were defeated.

Debate this morning in the House centered on a massive education bill, passed by Republicans after several hours of debate in which Democrats decried the cuts to education aid the GOP has agreed to. In particular, Democrats questioned why the poorest school districts would sustain the biggest cuts in aid.

“Not a single school district from the commonwealth will receive more funding this year than it did last year,” said Rep. Matt Smith, D-Allegheny. “Not a single school district out of 500.”

Minority Leader Frank Dermody, D-Allegheny, said the state’s students improved their school test scores for eight years under Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell as education spending rose every year. He argued that Republicans should use a state cash surplus to ease the size of the cuts.

“We have the funding to do that,” he said. “So pound your chests, and the children are going to suffer.”

But House Majority Leader Mike Turzai, R-Allegheny, countered that many of the state’s worst-performing schools also spend the most per child, and said the boom in Philadelphia charter school enrollment indicated that the existing system has failed them.

“We care about each and every kid in the commonwealth, and we want to make sure he or she has the opportunity to have the best life that that (American) dream can provide that child,” Turzai said. “And I am also pro-taxpayer, because we are not going to throw good money after bad.”

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